Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/127

 Rh gesture, sheltered his chosen partner with a corner of his garment. Sometimes, too, the pope held out a cup, at which the couple wetted their lips three times. Then it was cast upon the ground, and each tried to set his or her foot upon it. If the woman proved the most active of the two, it was taken as an omen that she would have the upper hand in the household. And as they left the church there were more symbolic ceremonies and make-believe endeavours to separate the couple, who clung together. Then everybody went back to the wedding-feast. The bride was expected to weep freely, and her companions egged her on, singing sad songs to her. Neither she nor the bridegroom were allowed to touch any of the dishes till, a swan having been served to all the other guests, a roast fowl was set before the newly-married pair.

This was the signal for their retirement, and here, even more clearly than in the details already related, the spirit of local mysticism, in its most coarsely sensual and naively cynical form, was manifested. The symbolic fowl led the way to the nuptial chamber, escorted by the taper-bearers, the korovaï-bearers, and all the rest of the company. The tapers were thrust into the barrels of corn, the married pair were conducted into the room with much further ceremony, and the guests went back to the feast, while the matchmaker and her assistants helped the young people to undress. When this process began, the wife, in token of humility, had to pull off her husband's boots. In one of them a coin was hidden, and if she pulled this boot off first, it was looked on as a lucky omen. Meanwhile the husband enacted his part by drawing the symbolic whip out of his belt and applying it with the discretion the occasion demanded! The couple were left alone at last, still guarded by an iassiélnik, who went on a protective round outside the house, on foot or horseback, and the feasting continued merrily for an hour. At the end of that time a girl was sent to ask for news of the married pair. If the husband answered through the closed door that he was well, it meant that 'good had been accomplished between them,' and forthwith the guests went back to the loft to carry food to the husband and wife. The fowl constituted the chief portion of this ritual feast, but other dishes were habitually added to it. There was an exchange of toasts and compliments, then the newly-married folk were put to bed again, and the guests, departing, sat down once more to make merry.

The next morning the ceremonies followed their course. First came the indispensable bath, after which the wife presented her husband's mother with the proofs of her virginity, in the shape of the shift worn on the wedding night, which